A year later, search continues for driver involved in Bluffton teen’s death

A year after a community came together to support a family who lost their daughter and sister in a hit-and-run crash, investigators are still looking for answers.

Grace Sulak, 14, died May 7, 2016, in the crash on Interstate 26 in Calhoun County as she rode with her best friend, Emma Dewey, and Dewey’s mother, Andrea Dewey, back home from a track meet in Columbia. The girls were students at River Ridge Academy.

The driver of what the S.C. Highway Patrol has described as a white Dodge Ram 2500 pickup with damage to the right-front passenger side fled the scene.

One year later, he or she is still out there.

“We investigate every lead that we get,” Lance Cpl. Matthew Southern of the Highway Patrol said on Thursday. “We will occasionally get a hit. We’ve received leads, but nothing that panned out to actually be that vehicle that was involved.”

As time passes, the investigation becomes more difficult, Southern said. The the vehicle may have been repaired, sold, or the owner moved from the area, he said.

Still, he said, “there’s always hope,” he said.

Andrea Dewey, who suffered injuries from the crash along with her daughter Emma, said in December that she remembers the white truck coming up fast behind her.

As she tried to move into another lane to get out of the way, the vehicle struck her Nissan and she ran off the road into a nearby treeline. She then remembers waking to the moans of her daughter and a silent Grace.

“I remember a jolt and it felt like we were flying, but then I don’t remember anything,” she said.

Kristen Sulak, Grace’s mother, said in December that every time the Sulak-Hanson family sees a white truck, their hearts skip a beat.

“In the beginning, I was like, they just need to come forward,” Kristen Sulak said. “It’s not about blaming. It’s not going to end anything. It’s not going to bring Grace back. But now it’s just maddening.”

Anyone with information about the driver involved in the crash that killed Grace Sulak can call the S.C. Highway Patrol at 843-953-6010 or 1-800-768-1506.

Anonymous tips can also be given to Crime Stoppers at 1-888-Crime-SC.

This story was originally published May 7, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "A year later, search continues for driver involved in Bluffton teen’s death."